


Love Don't Live Here Anymore

by SouthernMoonshine



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Angst, Gen, POV Second Person, romantic friendships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 22:15:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1321168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernMoonshine/pseuds/SouthernMoonshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When did it begin? Was there one defining point?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Don't Live Here Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> [Love Is Dead, by Kerli](http://youtube.com/watch?v=XdXvqMF-6vI)

One thing you learn, here, but not quickly. But maybe learn is the wrong word. Maybe it's remembering.

So long forgot maybe it is learning. A word you'd never really thought to use in your life: _love._

Oh it started with the dragon, steel and fire and a wicked tongue. It starts with her, but it doesn't end with her. Love is the taste of smoke and the grit of ash between your teeth and cool steel under your gloved fingers. It's moonlight and flames and the dawnwind in your face tasting fresh like seasalt. Love is afternoons idled away in silence punctuated by the turn of pages and the rasp of steel on whetstone. It's a gloved hand that leaves bruises when he grabs, it's the way he bows his head and bares his hands and braids your hair with easy patience. Love is learning to bow your head and learning to be comfortable with liking it, softening your words and realizing you don't have to fight for the silence.

The things you learn are many, all so fast; a nobleman's a soldier, and you must learn to ape the role in public. He undertakes you when Adamo's patience fails, irons the others into helping: speech and dancing and politics, and he is laughably distressed by the idea that you don't know how to read or even sign your name. You teach him, too: bawdy songs and throwing knives and where to get the best roasted chestnuts in all of Thremedon. You learn eachother reluctantly at first, yet things begin to fall into place step by step and now when he pinches his lips together you laugh because you know he's laughing too.

When did it really start? Was there one defining point? Somewhere disdain softened into affection. The taste of ash on your tongue and the smell of salt and flesh and he hangs out the window with you drinking stolen wine and you talk of little brothers and long-ago loves. Of what it meant and what it wasn't, and then of what it isn't. He talks of life after fire and dragonsteel: you listen and think there might yet be a place for you when this is through.

Love is leaving your heart on a snowy mountainside where his body came to rest.

Love is ashes and fire, dragonsteel and the death of a dream.

_Amery._


End file.
